


just another purgatory; here at last, here at last

by rightsidethru



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, I don't even know wtf this is, M/M, but I hope you all enjoy it anyway, my mind can be rather terrifying at times, sorta pre-slash?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/pseuds/rightsidethru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes longer than expected for Carlos to finally <i>see</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just another purgatory; here at last, here at last

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cesium_Clock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesium_Clock/gifts).



> First foray into the Night Vale fandom~ I haven't yet had the chance to listen to all of the podcasts, so any mistakes are my own and I hope that you can forgive me for them. Regardless, however: I hope that you enjoy this story!

**just another purgatory; here at last, here at last**

\---

The sky is the color of puce.

It's a hue that the sky _should not_ be, unnatural and all that much more disturbing because of it. It's unsettling, an impossibility, and the scientist refuses to believe in things that _should not be_ (but, oh, how he worries that his belief will soon enough be changed). His keeps his eyes to the asphalt, stepping out of the rental car and onto Night Vale's main street. For just a moment, it bubbles beneath his feet, and the scientist catches his breath as fear settles low and deep--and, just as quickly, the image fades and Carlos is once again standing on solid ground.

"Welcome to Night Vale, dear Carlos."

His head jerks up, brown eyes wide, skin prickling from the words that ghosted against the shell of his ear--barely a breath, something more than a whisper, a tone that stirred a hidden instinct buried deep through years and logic and education, remembering once upon a time ago with midnight striking over and over again and monsters under the bed--

There is no one there.

**

He explores the town day by day, taking his time in finding new places, hidden places: the shadows call to him, drawing him in, taking him further and further into the impossibilities that seemed to be all that Night Vale was-is-would ever be. Carlos carries his observations with him in a leather-bound journal, pen scritching quietly against the lined paper--writing, ever writing, thoughts whirling through his mind, ever flickering, before scrawling across the pages in a barely decipherable mess of words, words, words. Everything and nothing: Night Vale should not exist, but it did, and the terror comes to him each time Carlos gathers his courage to step out along the void, following streets and alleyways and paths deeper into both the wilderness surrounding the town and the atrocities of the city itself.

Ever nighttime, ever Night Vale, and his gaze catches upon a long, tan coat--billowing out in the desert wind, heat and sulfur and the the taste of damnation and eternal suffering on the back of his tongue. Flies buzz quietly, a dark cloud that obscures the man in the tan jacket--blocks out all of his features except for that too-bright, too-sharp curve of a smile. Pointed teeth, hellfire buried at the back of an endless, eternal maw--and Carlos' mind blanks and bleeds into static.

_I don't want to remember this I don't want to remember please don't ever make me remember._

He blinks, surroundings sparking into a white canvas of emptiness that brings only relief and a desperate sort of _gladness_.

He blinks again, breath stuttering within his lungs, and... he cannot remember.

Carlos glances down at his journal, words filling the page, and yet--there, for some reason--one word cuts off midway, an inked line instead cutting across the page, mark deep enough to tear through paper and onto the pages below. There is something telling about all of this, the heaviness of that mark, that belies a sense of... panic. Perhaps. But the scientist cannot remember just what startled him enough to make that mark, and--he is relieved, for some reason, for the memory's loss. (Dread _dread **dread**_ , permeating each and every cell until he can taste his heart in his throat and-- _no_ , he cannot remember.)

He shakes his head, the gesture slight and trying to dismiss the current trend of his thoughts--wanting to focus back on his explorations, on the wonder and fear that comes with each new place that Carlos stumbles here in this impossible town. The scientist snaps his journal shut, needing that decisive gesture to echo within his own psyche, and takes a breath-- _sulfur_ , rotting and despair--before heading out to a different area of Night Vale, the Arby's sign a beacon for him to follow blindly.

**

"The angels look after you, you know."

The voice is unexpected and Carlos is immersed in his work; he jerks in surprise, hands scrabbling across the sticky diner table. He glances up, chocolate-hued gaze catching on Old Woman Josie's kind, slightly senile expression. "...excuse me?" he asks, voice hoarse from disuse and the unsettled feeling that settles low in his belly. There is a warning that threads through his mind, that tries to ease him away from questioning further--but curiosity killed the cat, and Carlos has been always tempted by knowledge, no matter what form that knowledge might come in (or the price that he might end up paying for it, either).

Old Woman Josie's expression turns kinder, more sympathetic--pitying, though Carlos cannot fathom as to why.

"The angels look after you. They watch over you. They keep you safe."

His eyes close, his head shakes, and Carlos' fingers tighten ever so slightly over his journal (his observations, his _knowledge_ , a defense against impossibilities and an anchor here in this town that _should not_ exist, and terror rises as his knuckles whiten). "I don't believe in angels," he eventually murmurs, finally opening his eyes to meet the unknowable gaze of the woman seated across him. Something--something that Carlos does not wish to know--flickers in her eyes, and her hands, cold as ice, settle upon his where they still clutch at his journal.

"That's fine, my dear. Whether or not you believe, they will still look after you. It can't be any other way, after all."

"I don't understand," Carlos finally says, skin tight around his eyes as he fights for some semblance of understanding--and yet not wanting it, all the same, wishing for the ignorance that he usually finds so distasteful, wanting the bliss that comes in the _lack_ of knowledge and everything that that lack connotates.

"You don't now," Old Woman Josie says easily in response, fingers tightening further over Carlos' before abruptly releasing him. She stands then, the move oddly graceful for someone of her age, and her head inclines in a regal gesture that should mean something that Carlos chooses not to acknowledge (because it's better this way, really and truly and he cannot tell himself otherwise). "But you will eventually, dear Carlos."

She leaves then, and Carlos is afraid.

(He cannot tell, not truthfully, not within the upper part of his consciousness, _why_.)

**

It is the stench that mainly keeps Carlos away.

The scent of rotting things is overwhelming, taking over all other senses until the scientist chokes on the smell--rotting animal bodies, maggot-filled and liquifying down to their most basic components, bones the only things left behind as the Glow Cloud rains and rains and rains down entropy. Carlos gags the first time he comes near the Glow Cloud and its own hellish downpour, and it takes everything within him--scientist integrity wrapping tight 'round his will, hardening it to diamond density--to stop himself from bending over at the side of the road to empty his stomach of its contents.

It is the smell and _unnaturalness_ of the Glow Cloud that raises the hair over Carlos' body; he knows that this is an Abomination, something that should not be suffered to exist: defying nature and physics and any moral, karmic rules with impunity until all the scientist can see is Death and hear, echoing chaotically, tolling like a bell, the words _All Hail the Glow Cloud_ over and over again in his mind until all he can ever hope for is blessed _silence_. The words resonate, compelling something within him that urges nothing more than for the dark-eyed man to submit--worship at a ( _this_ ) god's altar, wonder at the truly finite nature that he himself is part of (human and mortal, nothing constant, nothing that will ever be catalogued as ' _in_ finite)--and yet, through it all, there is some objective, rational part of Carlos that says _no_ and rejects the demand, observes the phenomenon and tries, instead, to come up with a rational explanation for all of this that he knows will never be true and will always be nothing more than a hypothesis that he shall cling to like a prayer.

_All Hail the Glow Cloud._

The stench of rotting things intensifies for one long, endless moment--

And then there is the brief touch of feathers against his cheeks, like a memory long ago forgotten and lighter than a butterfly's chaste kiss, and silence once more rings through Carlos' mind. He feels empty, drained of everything that he is-was-ever shall be, and exhaustion pulls demandingly at his limbs until the scientist can do nothing less than fall to his knees. The movement jars his body, shudders overtaking legs and arms and torso, and--there, once more--there is the gentlest touch of feathers.

Carlos remembers Old Woman Josie's words and, for one shining moment, he _believes_.

(It does not last long, however, and before long Carlos is once more scribbling theories about solar flares and atmospheric phenomenon into the worn pages of his journal, science and math and rationality overtaking--by choice, desperate for anything else--belief and superstition, myths and legends and the impossibility that is Night Vale and her many citizens and landmarks. It is easier _not_ to believe because Carlos is a scientist and he came here, to this little desert town, to prove so many of his colleagues wrong, to place himself within the annals of scientific history when he solves this puzzle, and it is horrifying to consider anything else a possibility because there is too much, _too much_ , and Carlos has spent his entire life _not believing_. The monsters beneath his bed faded with the passing of time, as body matured into adulthood, and this too shall pass into less-than-memory. Carlos is Science and Rationality, and he will give truth to the Glow Cloud, shall give Truth to all of Night Vale.)

A dead cat falls from the sky to land near his still-trembling hand, and Carlos can no longer stop himself from vomiting as he meets its glassy golden eyes, as blank as his mind had been moments ago.

**

They call it the Whispering Forest.

Visitors state that the trees speak of promises, of truths, of desires and possibilities: that the universe comes together here, in a too-sharp point, and stretches out far and wide and overcomes others with the sheer beauty of its existence. Here, there are answers. Here, there is peace. Here, knowledge is freely given and taken--and it does not matter how much the City Council tells residents to stay away, people are still drawn here like moths to a flame. Knowing that they will be burnt to death, but know--too--that climax will be worth any pain suffered for there is _nirvana_.

Carlos comes here and stands at the forest's edge, shade from the trees enveloping him in mist and shades of neverending grey; he waits for the forest to whisper to him, waits for the many truths and he wants- _needs_ to know; he watches other visitors collapse where they stand, rapturous expressions forever frozen on their face, and all he feels is jealousy.

The Whispering Forest is silent to him, closed off and unreachable, and Carlos feels like a deaf man left adrift in a concert of sound and experience.

The dark eyed man knows that he is being deprived of something necessary, and the resentment should not feel as strong as it is: but it is there, festering, and it is easy enough to adopt the scientific persona to write _No data collected._ in his journal--

But he knows that he has been excluded, left out and behind for some indiscernible reason, and the acknowledgment of his exclusion _hurts_. He has lived here for five months now, and yet Carlos knows that he is not part of this community. He is apart, a bystander, and he does not know what to do now, the first time that he has been thoroughly confronted with this unrelenting fact. He is not part of the whole, the outlier that Carlos has spent his entire academic career studying and dissecting, and the man feels...

Loss.

**

Time is relative.

The clocks' innards move back and forth, ticking away: seconds are eaten with every steady tock of the clock's hands, and--just as steadily--began to move backwards as seconds are given back, minutes are gifted, hours are hidden away in the twilight that seems to paint Night Vale in constant monochromatic tones. The world should not be painted in black and white colors, but it is here, in Night Vale--and the clocks readily give up their secrets of time and space and Carlos does nothing but sit and watch, a single, unchanging island as the world ebbs and flows and _changes_ all around him. Here is another of the town's many impossibilities, tempered with a visit from the man in the tan jacket (a visit he should not remember, but does), and Carlos knows that he stands alone.

He does not know what to believe anymore.

Nothing is real.  
Everything is real.

Carlos does not reach for his journal.

**

Carlos stands before the dog park.

He has been told to stay from the dog park from his first day in Night Vale. He has been told to pretend that it does not exist ( _because if you see something, say nothing_ ), has been told to ignore the hooded figures that the scientist can see walking methodically down the many park paths. Curiosity has not reared its head when he considers the dog park, warning always staying forefront within his mind: there is something about the park, some aura that can be neither touched nor seen that permeates from it, keeping others away with a constant sense of 'Do Not Enter.' It is a sense that he encounters all too often in Night Vale, but it is here that Carlos feels it the strongest.

He knows, with an instinct that trickles back to the time when his ancestors hid in caves from the creatures of the dark, that it is not wise to enter into the dog park. Knows that it is better to let the town keep this particular secret hidden, that not all truths can be--or, more importantly, _should be_ revealed--but such facts are discarded in the unrelenting reminder that he stands alone, a singular entity within a crowd. The citizens move 'round him, never coming into contact with him: distant bodies and distant eyes, watching Carlos steadily as he digs himself deeper and deeper into the realization that Night Vale can be neither quantified nor qualified, and his experiment was doomed to fail before it ever had the chance to begin. Always apart and forever a part, a piece of a whole that found it impossible to merge itself into a sole entity--

His mind scatters itself with numbers and knowledge learned in universities, is proven through degrees and doctorates that are worth less than the paper they're written on while he stays in this town.

And always, _always_ , he hears the Voice on the radio--Cecil, murmuring secrets ever-so-readily about Night Vale and Carlos wishes for nothing more than to _know_ how Cecil _Knows_ \--hears warnings and compliments both, and Carlos cannot understand what this all means when he wishes for nothing but the purest form of Fact and Truth. And perhaps Cecil knows ( _Knows_ ), but the scientist outsider cannot yet allow himself to _see_ \--and the world is painted always, always in shades of black and grey and the sky is never the turquoise that Cecil speaks of so lovingly.

Carlos is aware of the fact that he is missing something, and it is the feeling of loss that finally coaxes him into reaching out, fingertips settling upon the padlock that keeps the dog park closed to all of Night Vale's citizens. His fingertips exert barely any pressure, but the lock clatters through the chainlink fencing to pool on the dirt at Carlos' feet. It is an omen, he acknowledges this well enough, and yet it is still not enough to stop the brown eyed man from pushing the gate open further to step into the space that the dog park and its denizens claim unapologetically as their own.

There is whispering amongst the trees, voices groaning out words in a language that Carlos cannot understand but which makes his ears bleed, crimson trails tracking down his throat in the steady pulse of his heart, and-- _still_ \--the scientist, the believer, the outsider within Carlos will not allow him to turn away to the dubious promise of safety. He steps further down that first path, gravel crunching quietly beneath his boots, and he can feel an epiphany hover on the outskirts of his awareness, the promise he was so vehemently denied at the Whispering Forest, and Carlos reaches for it with heartbreaking desperation, needing to finally _Know_.

This is Night Vale and it is his home, no matter its impossibilities.

He is blind and deaf and dumb, wilfully ignorant in all of the truths that he has denied over the months: and perhaps he is dying, has been dead, and this is heaven or hell or purgatory, granted to him as some half-life, clutched at with green-tipped fingers after his trip to Radon Canyon at the beginning of this not-experiment: but it is still _his_ , is still _home_ , and Carlos wishes to _Know_ and to belong and to be part of the impossible whole. He is still a scientist, but driven mad by belief and disbelief both, and he is reminded of Frankenstein and his Creature who pushed past the allowed boundaries of mortality and morality and possibility, and all he can think of is _**yes**_.

One of the many hooded figures typically seen scattered throughout town steps out from the foliage, movements and body so still that the figure might as well have been carved from granite--never and always alive and present, something _more_ that slips into the meta--and Carlos reaches out, one hand extended towards the other in supplication.

"Please," he says.

"Let me _see_ ," he begs, voice breaking.

It is not possible (but, then again, that is par the norm for Night Vale), but the hooded figure stills even further. Carlos cannot see its countenance, cannot know if thoughts fly over its face (or even if it has a face at all), cannot read body language or interpret the cascade of thought and opinion and fact within the figure's gaze, and the scientist feels a stretching moment of despair--and it is then that the hooded figure extends a hand towards the man, black robes swaying gently to-and-fro in the breeze that has suddenly sprung up between them both. It is an invitation, but one that Carlos must make an effort in accepting; the figure does not step closer, does not make the decision any easier--and yet, it is no decision for Carlos at all, even as he steps forward to clasp his fingers tightly around the unknowable figure.

"Finally open my eyes," he whispers.

**

There is a figure that stands just at the edge of the boardwalk, facing out into the desert sands the scrub brush scattered through the landscape. The figure is shadowed, but changes in light give the appearance of wings stretching wide, encompassing the man's body; the light shifts once more and there are tentacles, thick and writhing and horrifying to gaze upon, appendages from a creature from the deep (an Elder, _the_ Elder, an eldritch abomination whose life has spanned millennia and eternity and the universe's eventual end); another shift, another change, another truth revealed: hooves, delicately formed and cloven and burning with the heat of a exploding star, cracking the asphalt beneath and melting it until all that is left is a soupy mess; there is a tail when the world rights itself differently, limb swaying hypnotically to the heart of Night Vale (the figure's heart, for voice and body and soul encapsulated the town's entirety and swallowed it whole)--and there, once or twice or always, Carlos can never tell anymore (nor does he want to), he might- _might not_ see a slowly blinking third eye--

It does not matter.

None of it does.

It is all truth, all lies, various shades of reality that can be, will be, should be, will never be possible: an existence that makes a mind shudder to consider its enormity, shatters it to unrepentant pieces, and Carlos knows that this is another truth that he will not-will have, perhaps one day, perhaps not, but it does not matter for time is a fiction here in Night Vale, and nothing-everything is what it seems.

The figure turns, glasses briefly mirroring and hiding the other's gaze from Carlos' sight, and the dark eyed man with the perfect hair steps in closer so that their shoulders might lightly brush. There is heat of hellfire and the distant chill of space, and Carlos' breath comes tight in his chest as he finally says: "It's nice to finally meet you, Cecil Baldwin."

And the abomination's smile stretches wide and Carlos trembles slightly because he is _afraid_ is _exhilerated_ is _sick_ is _horrified_ is filled with _joy_ , and Cecil returns with, "Welcome home, dear Carlos."

**

_Good night, Night Vale._

_**Good night.** _

\--------

-end.-


End file.
